Top 5 things I love about having hands.

1.Holding stuff
Wow. This seriously never gets old. Have you ever thought of all the things that you can hold with your hands? A ton of stuff. Just today, I held some LEGOs, a sandwich, a hammer, my wife’s boobs, four pounds of cheese, 3 shoes, a cat…well, I could go on. The point is that just about anything you think of being able to hold, you can hold with your hands. Scientists think that hands might actually be the best things to use to hold things with.

2.High Fives
Through out history, one thing has remained constant: The coolest way to greet, or show appreciation to another person is the High Five. High Fives say to someone “Hey there. I recognize you as a colleague and a peer and I want to loudly clap my hand against yours in a dynamic and fucking awesome way.” You ever tried to high five someone without a hand? You can’t. Otherwise you’re stumping them. That’s just creepy. Knock it off.

3.Sign Language
Now, I’m not talking signing for the deaf here. If you are deaf and missing your hands then you have a whole word of problems and that goes well beyond the scope of what it is that I am talking about here. I’m talking the important things we rely on every day. No hands = No thumbs up. No hands = No Ok Sign. No hands = No Flipping The Bird. No Hands = No Devil’s Horns.
Think about this for a moment. You get cut off in traffic and you can’t flip someone off (I don’t know…maybe you’re driving a modified car that doesn’t need hands…fuck off). What is waving your handless arm at them going to do? Not a thing! What about when Alice in Chains comes on the radio and you want to show people how righteously you are rocking out? It can’t happen now. You cannot rock. You can only bob your head in sadness.

4.Scratching
Hands are ideally suited to scratching. Each hand comes equipped with five flappy things that are perfect for scratching. The flappy things ( I think this is their technical name) even come equipped with some sort of toenail on them that aids the scratching process. When it comes to itch relief these things are the fricken bee’s knees. If you happen to have an itch right now, put down your fork and just use those toenails on your hand flappy things.

5.Waving
If you don’t have hands to wave with then you are just flailing.

Hey Buddy! It’s Future Chris here (though usually people just call me Chris). I’ve heard that there is another Future Chris but I haven’t seen heard from him yet. Which, when I think about it,is somewhat chilling to ponder. But I’m sure it is all good in the hood. Yeah. People are saying that again. It went out of style for awhile, but after the decade-long bloody battle that was the Cliché Wars, it’s back. That was a dark and awful time.

So yeah. The present…I mean future (sorry). Neat times. Lot of crazy stuff happening nowadays. Today is Stephaniemeyersember the 13^th, in the year 2041. You’re in your sixties now…but don’t sweat it. A fluke accident on the set of The Transporter Part 17 cured aging. We’re all good now. Let’s see…what’s new…

Oh while I think of it…Could you go online to Pizza Pizza and order a pizza delivery for today at…um…12:45 p.m.? Get the usual…but skip the Hyper Pepperoni. I don’t think that was invented yet. Just put it on your credit card. I’m tapped out at the moment but you know I’m good for it.

Ok. New stuff? Remember when I used to hope that one day Bionic Laser Arms would be a reality? Well guess what? “Pew pew pew” That’s right! WE HAVE A FRICKIN BIONIC L- hold on…pizza’s here—

—Man that’s good. Thanks.—WE HAVE A FRICKIN BIONIC LASER ARM NOW. The day this thing comes on the market we end up sawing our arm off at the shoulder to get one. Word of advice. Remember not to use the good towels. Wow…Kristy was not pleased with that. Though even she has to admit the arm is pretty slick. Well…she hasn’t admitted it so much out loud. It’s in her eyes though. I can see it.

So…I’d ask what’s new with you…but frankly I already know. And it’s just not that interesting. You might think that you are having a great time now, but no. You aren’t. I have a chart here somewhere which proves it. It will be another 12 years before interesting starts being a word you can legitimately use. Where the hell is that chart. It might have been eaten by the wombats. Wow. Wombats are everywhere. It’s wild. DO NOT TRY TO RIDE THEM! You will want to when you first see them migrating this way…Woah! That is one huuuuuuggggeeeee mistake we are going to make. Thankfully, the Bionic Laser arm will come in handy if you disregard this message. Which you probably will. I know I would.

You’re probably wondering how I’m able to send a message from the future. Not sure of the logic behind it. Someone spilled Red Bull on one of the servers at work and BAM…we have emails to the past now. Kind of cool. Not as useful as you would think though. Anytime you try to influence the past in a major way, for some strange reason, an elephant explodes. Completely blown apart in a loud soggy explosion. We went through a LOT of elephants before we figured that one out. There’s only about a dozen of them left, and to be honest, we’re kind of scared as to what would happen once they are gone. Mostly I just use it now to remind myself to set the Betamax to record something back to TV (Betamax eventually ends up coming back and dominating the market…not sure if this counts or not…but it might be worth an elephant exploding to invest in some Betamax stock).

Anyways…only another 20 seconds until todays temporal window is open on the server.

Have a good one!

Which you won’t…for another 12 years,

(Future) Chris

As I sit here and ponder what it is that makes a truly great leader I find myself also drawn to the traits that would be a leader’s undoing. Take Ralph for example. Ralph would make a terrible world leader. I’m not talking about King Ralph of course. I think we can all agree that John Goodman was incredible in that movie and his wonderful potrayal of Ralph Jones as the unlikely ruling monarch of England has left us with no uncertainty about what an amazing world leader he would be. I’m talking about Ralph, my black cat.

I’ve compiled a few reasons as to why I think that my cat would not be fit to control the direction of the world.

1. Cleanliness might be next to Godliness but there are limits you know. I see no problem with a person setting an example for us on a global setting of the importance of good hygiene. Where I draw the line is the prolonged eye contact. Imagine if Stephen Harper were holding a press conference. Instead of delivering any sort of meaningful speech, all he does is stare into the camera and lick himself clean. No wavering in his stare. He holds the camera in his gaze and takes a trip to lick town (If you don’t know who Stephen Harper is, he’s the robot that is made out of plastic who is currently running Canada. On the upside, I’m pretty certain he has an outstanding collection of sweater vests).

The bottom line is, this is creepy behaviour and can do nothing but lead to seriously creeping folks out.

2. Every morning I pretty much wake the same way. To the thoroughly unpleasant feeling of my cat licking my hair. It is really hard to explain the feeling of a cat chewing on and running his tongue over your hair. It is bizarre. It is also not a good trait to find in the person that is making all the decisions in that control and govern out lives. This obsessive behaviour is not limited to my scalp though. Ralph licks tons of stuff…windows, shelves, walls, floors, my hair. I’m not sure that this inspires trust and confidence. It more just makes you afraid to touch things. Seriously, Lord Ralph could have licked anything, making nothing safe. This might actually run counter to my first point about a hygienic leader.

3. What would you call a person who routinely just knocks stuff off of tables and shelves? You’d call him an asshole. Cause that’s what he his. He’s an asshole. Ralph is an asshole. He will stare at something and then, for absolutely no reason that is fathomable to any rational person, knock it onto the floor. At this point he will lean forward to see where it fell. He does it in such a way that you can only assume he’s making sure that it is actually on the floor now. You don’t want this type of asshole in office. What if those are live grenades on the table? What if they are just well organized files? Ralph won’t care. He’s going to knock that shit down and someone is going to need to clean it up. Or possibly blow up. In the case of the grenade that is. The files probably wouldn’t blow you up. Can’t guarantee that though. The point is, this is the behaviour of someone that just wants to see stuff broken or messed up. Not cool.

4. He’s a fucking cat. He has no ambition. He has no thumbs. There is no scenario in which he could possibly end up with the control of the world in his grasp. It just doesn’t work.

I can understand a time when humankind had not yet evolved the reasoning skills to explain where we came from. Stories are a handy way of filling in those blanks. How did the sun rise? The work of the Gods. Where does this weather come from? It was sent by the Gods. It was a handy way of covering up our lack of knowledge. Anything we didn’t understand became something that was the domain of a higher power. As our understanding has grown though for the world and the universe around us we haven’t discounted this practice and I can’t understand why.

We now have what is referred to by some as the God of the Gaps. When we reach a point where our current knowledge cannot explain some phenomenon, we attribute it to God. “This is where the divine providence lies. This is the proof of his existence. Since we have no explanation it is therefore the work of the Lord”. It instead, to me, seems a much more fitting logic to say that there is just something we have not yet discovered. It would be arrogant to assume that we have at our disposition all the tools and knowledge to unlock the secrets of the universe at this time…but it is just as arrogant to assert that lack of said explanations automatically proves the existence of a higher power. It would seem to me to be evident that everyday we are discovering more. That every day we are closer to being able to explain how it is that the world came to be and yet many of us still try to hold on to the idea that there is still a God that created everything. I liken it all to still deciding to believe that there is a Santa Clause living in the North Pole even though our parents have already sat us down and explained how every year they put the presents under the tree and drink the milk and eat the cookies that have been laid out. I prefer to put aside that reasoning. To no longer accept that illusion and to instead try and see the universe through logical and scientific eyes. There is so much natural beauty and wonder in the universe that I fail to see how there is need to attribute it to a supernatural being.

We live in a world of beauty. With changing weather…orbiting a a massive nuclear reactor at a distance of 149, 597, 870.7km. The scope of this universe is mind boggling. It is impressive enough when we picture our place in the world. When we try to wrap our minds around our place in the solar system or the universe at large…it is very very humbling. If we were to guess at the number of planets in the whole of the universe it would not be unreasonable to put the number somewhere around 1000000000000000000 (thank you Carl Sagan). Dr. Sagan uses this little factoid for one of my favourite arguments. If there are a billion billion planets in the universe, and the odds of life developing on a planet such as we have is 1 in a billion…then there are roughly a billion planets in the universe that hold life (extreme paraphrasing here since the book is all the way upstairs).

There is an unfortunate trend today of a sense of superiority amongst nonbelievers such as myself. I have read the works of such writers as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens and I agree wholeheartedly with their underlying messages…I just wish that they could argue their points in a manner that wasn’t so condescending or condemning of people that choose to hold onto a faith. It isn’t for me. I don’t understand religion, I don’t understand faith. I realize that the point of faith is supposed to be believing in something despite the lack of evidence or proof but that rings hollow to me. All I ask is that we can try and keep everything out of the way. I don’t believe that someone else’s religious views should affect my life in any way and in return I will not argue with you about how I feel in regards to the mythology of your religion.

I do no need need the fear of divine retribution to live a moral life. I have no fear of hell but that does not mean that I live a life in sin. I live holding to the thought that we all have to share the world so we might as well try to make it a decent place for all of us. We’re all in this together. What’s more…I believe that we only get one shot at it. This is it. So…let’s try and do it right.

Please don't tell my wife how high up I was when I took this picture. Thanks.

For the record...he tasted awesome.

One of the first things we discovered was the beaver skull. Logically, my first concern was that by taking this skull I had disturbed an ancient beaver burial ground and that I would forever after be haunted by ghost beavers and their gnawing damnations. Turns out their plan of retribution was instead to just attack my dogs. A few days ago I had let the dogs outs and then after a few moments I went to see what the commotion was. The two dogs had found a beaver. Walter was simply spinning on the spot and barking excitedly but poor Corbin was trying to sniff the thing…and this can be tough when about 30lbs of rodent does not wish to be sniffed and would instead prefer lunging at your face repeatedly. They also occasionally knock trees down across my driveway. Bastards. I’m not giving them back their skull.

Our yard is now littered with bird feeders. So far we have seen Blackbirds (Red-winged), Cardinals, Chickadees (Black-capped), Cowbirds, Crows, Doves (Mourning), Goldfinches, Grackles, Blue Jays, Dark-eyed Junco, White-breasted Nuthatches, Robins, Song Sparrows, Wild Turkeys, Woodpeckers (Downy, Hairy, Pileated) and Northern Flickers (Yellow Shafted). This is quite nice and relaxing to watch. Less relaxing is when you open the door of your wood stove and there is a red winged blackbird staring out at you.

There was a bird in my stove. After I put the dogs upstairs I returned to the stove and considered my next move. I started by grabbing a box and returning to the stove. Yeah…that didn’t work. Each of my attempts to snag the bird with the box was thwarted by the bird looking at me smugly and calmly stepping to the side. My next tactic involved grabbing a shirt. I would use the shirt to trap the bird and put him back outside.  So…with a shirt in hand I took another shot at bird wrangling. Fed up with my shenanigans the bird jumped out of the stove and started running across the floor. I followed him until he ran under the bookcase. I moved the bookcase and then remembered the whole under the bookcase. The whole that led to the space that ran under the floorboards. The bird had found it though. The next few minutes were spent filled with clanging noises as the bird ran around and clanged off of vents and occasional appearances of a beak through various gaps in the floor. The ceiling of the basement is a drop one so when I went downstairs I was able to just lift a tile to see if I could see the bird. I could…he was staring at me. Then he turned and ran. There was more clanging. Finally I was able to get him cornered and he jumped out of the ceiling and moved down to the floor. After a few moments of running around the room he jumped up to the window and stood there looking outside. Fortunately, this window has no screen so I was able to slide it open and he was left open to the world. Which he didn’t feel like entering again. I ended up poking him in the back until finally he gave me a dirty look and flew away.

One of the nicest features of the property is the pond. It is home to many nice fishes, all of which like to be fed…

YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME!!!

it is now also home to a couple of turtles. Twice now while driving home I’ve stopped to move turtles off of the road (it is a compulsion…I’ve also stopped to move turtles…don’t judge me). Instead of just moving off them to the ditch though I’ve brought them home and put them in the pond. My plan is to eventually breed an army of turtles and use them to re-enact the first four levels of Super Mario Bros.

The wildlife has been interesting enough around the house but I figured that I would start exploring the rest of the land. I started hiking through the wetlands behind the house. I found interesting trails, duck nests, evidence of more beavers…and a van.

I can't wait to show this van to Hurly.

50% of all nightmares are generated here. True fact.

Yup…in the middle of the marshy forest behind my house is a van. A van filled with tires, batteries, a vehicle’s gas tank, animal droppings ,and (though I didn’t see it) the bodies of at least two drifters. Weird huh? This wasn’t all there was back there though. I also found stacks of logs like the one that were used in the construction of this house, pile of bricks, and old cart and wagon, two giant gas tanks and what appears to be a decades old piece of machinery. I can’t wait to see what I find next month.

Just in case you missed the horrifying words printed on the face of that machine

“Well, there wasn’t enough room in the car to take them out there.”

I couldn’t really argue this point.

The night went well. My grandfather was in a pretty good mood for the most part. He hadn’t wanted to go out in the first place but he liked the company once he was there. He couldn’t remember why it was that everyone was gathered (we had to keep reminding him that it was his birthday). He enjoyed the cake though, and every single time someone said ‘Happy Birthday’ to him he would beam a huge smile and thank the person. That was a good night.

The other night wasn’t such a good night. Papa got up to go to the washroom and when he got back he was screaming. He was screaming at my parents, the people that he now lives with, about how nobody at that facility took proper care of him, how they were all just taking his money and leaving him unattended. Finally my mother got him to take an anti-psychotic and got him to lay down. The next day he awoke and every thing was fine. All was right in the world of Papa.

My wife and I arrived later that day for Easter dinner. Like most times, I introduced Papa to my wife. Like most times, he said that he didn’t know that I was married and he would have liked to have gone to the wedding. He did.

My grandfather suffers from a form of dementia known as Dementia with Lewy Bodies. What happens is within the areas of the brain that control motor functions and memory there is a build up of Lewy bodies (alpha-synuclein protein) in the nuclei of neurons. When this happens symptoms that can resemble both Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s are triggered.

For the most part, my grandfather seems to act as if it is about 25 years ago. He still tries to get up and get ready for work almost every day and can get very agitated when someone tries to explain to him that he is retired. I’ve tried to understand this. I’ve tried to put myself in his shoes.

Imagine that you are just going about your routine…getting yourself ready for your day just the same way that you always do….and then someone tells you that you don’t work anymore (ok…maybe this would be a bit of a pleasant dream for some of us). Not only do you not work, but you haven’t worked in decades. You wouldn’t believe them…not for one second. You would know that you have to go to work. Anything other would be ridiculous.

This is the world for my grandfather now. He is rarely in the same moment as the people that he spends his time with now. Now he keeps company with people that argue with him and are constantly correcting him about things that he knows to be true. These people are constantly moving around on him. One moment a chair will be occupied by his son and the next it will be his son-in-law…or his grandson.

I miss my grandfather. I miss the man that used to spend hours playing checkers with me. The man that would take me to the park or take me fishing. I miss my Papa. I miss him taking me to visit his brothers. His brothers who are all now long dead, but he still seems to think he just saw yesterday. I see little glimpses of him every once in awhile, but it gets harder each time. More and more he is being replaced with a doddering old man and it breaks my heart.

I hope he isn’t aware of what is happening. I hope that he doesn’t know how much it hurts all off us to see him that way. The man that I remember and love would hate to know how hard it is for all of us.

Whenever he gets argumentative, whenever he gets difficult…I try to remind myself all of this. He is like a child now…he needs patience. He needs care.

I just want my Papa back and I know that I’m never going to get him back again.

Grade 7 was when it all began. It was lunch time recess and I was playing road hockey with some of the other guys (I’m Canadian…it is actually illegal to NOT play road hockey when you are a young male. It is true. I don’t even really like hockey and I still played it.). I can’t recall the exact circumstances leading up to the moment when Garrett turned around and punched me in the face. I assume it had something to do with the fact that he was a loser and I had tried to point it out to him (If you are reading this, Garrett, I’m sure that you are no longer a raging douchebag. It was probably just a youth thing. A lot of people grow out of the ‘I’m a huge fucking dick’ phase of their lives.
All I really remember of that day was the brief flash of stars and my once perfect nose being forever changed (seriously…I could have been a nose model. I think that is a real career).

After about a year of getting used to the new crooked look of my nasal features I had decided that more punishment was needed. So I set an elaborate plan into motion. I arranged circumstances so that my friend Adam would be bullied by Jason. This wasn’t too tough since Jason is a dick (unlike Garrett, I’m pretty sure that Jason is still a dick). After Jason had thrown Adam until a garbage can I stepped in and attacked him with my nose.
Crunch.
Mission accomplished. Nose was rebroken.

After this was a series of nose related injuries. I was tackled during high school and slammed my nose against a block of ice. Broken. I fell down a flight of stairs and stopped myself against a wall…with my face. Broken. Got drunk and jumped by a bunch of guys in university (I think…there is also a chance that I was hit by a car….I never really figured out what happened that night). Broken.

Perhaps the most embarrassing time that I broke my nose was about 10 years back my friend Willy (he prefers to be called William. This is why I call him Willy) and I were driving at night and spotted a hitch-hiker along the side of the road. I then recognized the hiker as being Adam (the guy from broken nose #2). I threw my head out the window to taunt him as we sped past. I really should have checked to ensure that the window was open first. It wasn’t. Well…it was partially open. It was rolled down enough that if someone were to throw their head quickly out the window the top of the window would hit the bridge of their nose REALLY FUCKING HARD. This is what I did. My nose had been made crooked over the years but that was the time that it got noticeable wider. Ah…take that nose. You smug bastard you.

All of this brings us up to last Monday. Last Monday when I am at the house that my wife and I were moving out of. Last Monday, when I am standing in the pouring rain trying to take apart a gazeebo all by myself. Not my best plan. I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t my best plan until I unscrewed a beam and lacked a third hand to catch it as it fell across my face. After awhile you come to recognize that cracking sound that you feel echo through your entire skull for what it is. A broken nose.

So now I sit and I prod at my tender facial features and explore the new contours of it and the new bumps and ridges that can be found there.

Next time needs to be spectacular I think.

St. Patrick’s Day is always a bit of a wild day when you’re a musician. Especially if you mostly play Celtic music…like I do. The bar is filled to capacity at any given moment with loud uproariously drunk people and they all want to hear the same few songs over and over and over and over again.

It wasn’t my first time playing St. Patty’s Day but this was a memorable one for me. This was the day I officially released my CD. I had recorded it and had done a very small run of discs. There were maybe a couple of hundred in total. I went to the bar with my gear and with a box filled with my music. I sang and I sold.

I remember the high I was feeling that day. Usually I had looked at St Patty’s Day with a small bit of trepidition. The day is long and when you’re on stage that many hours singing your lungs out…it can do a number on your body and leave you totally drained. On top of that add the number of people drinking as if prohibition is going to be announced any moment…it can be exhausting. You can’t predict the crowd. Sometimes they will be with you and sometimes they will turn on you in an instant. They were with me that day.

I sold close to a hundred copies of my CD that day. I felt exhilarated.  People were practically throwing their money at me to buy it. I could barely believe it. The CD had been a bit expensive to make. Studio time, CD printing…those costs added up…I made my money back on that first day.

After that…I never really thought about it. I sold some copies here and there around Detroit and Windsor but I never really thought about promotion. St. Patty’s Day had been the big day of moving. Finally my copies were gone and I never really saw the point of making another pressing. I figured that my sales were fairly limited to the Detroit area. I never imagined the effect that the internet would have on music.

So…8 years later I find myself on Twitter. Soon enough I have about 1000 people following me and a lot of them are aware that I am a musician (if only mostly in my head now). People had heard some of my music that I had posted and there was a bit of interest. I started thinking about that CD again. Wondering how I could go about distributing it again.

A little bit of research led me to an online distributor. A company that specializes in getting music out to all of the online music stores. iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Limewire…all of these stores and more they distribute to. I suddenly realized that the internet was one of the best things that could have happened to a small time musician like myself. These companies handle getting my music out. Online social networks like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook…these sites will be my promotion.

So I did it. I signed on with a distributor…I promoted the hell out of my album almost exclusively using Twitter. Now an album, that 8 yrs ago I thought would never leave Detroit, has sold all over the world. I’ve moved copies in Australia, Germany, Ireland, all over the USA…and they are still selling. All of this has lit a fire under my ass to record another album and I hope to have that done and out in a few months.

The Internet has completely changed how the small musician can hit a broader audience. I hope more of us can make use of this…it’s a changing world.

BTW…all of this has just been leading up to a plug for my album. Chris Angel – Celtic Stepson.

I submit to you a few superheroes (or villains) that are not the super person archetypes yet still could be surprisingly effective.

Captain Brainfart Ever walk into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? Ever been mid-conversation with some and forgotten what it was you were saying in the middle of a sentence? Of course you have. Everyone has.
Imagine if someone had the power to inflict this upon you at will. How many crimes could be stopped by that moment of hesitation when the robbers try to remember what they were stealing or where the escape doors are? How many Super Villains could be thwarted by stumbling over half forgotten monologues? Probably best if hew works alone though.

The Hiccup Inflictor I hate having hiccups. So do you. Do you know why? Because they are fucking annoying. It doesn’t sound like too fatal a power but what would happen if someone pointed a finger at you and you started hiccupping…AND THEN COULDN’T STOP!?!
Your life would be a living hell. You would be asked to leave movie theatres. You would slightly annoy everyone you came into contact with. You would be forever urinating due to the massive amounts of water you would consume to try and get rid of said hiccups. You wouldn’t ever be well rested. How the hell do you sleep when you keep hiccupping? This is a guy you would not want to piss off. Also a guy who can easily make life-long enemies.

Cheesie Dust Finger Man Covered in a fine layer of cheesie dust…Cheesie Dust Finger Man is the bane of white collar criminals everywhere. Not only does he stain everything he comes into contact with with those tell-tale orange smudges but he also leaves his foes with sticky messy fingers leaving them unable to touch anything until they can get cleaned up. Since, as we know, many Super Villains are afflicted with OCD and prefer to live in sterile looking lairs and bases…this guy will seriously get all up in their faces.

Awkward Erection Man Ok, so this superhero only really afflicts 49% of the population but if we look at the portrayal of most Super Villains in comic literature we will see that it is mostly males that are the big baddies. I don’t know about you but if I’m trying to hide a happy penis I’m more inclined to jsut stay sitting then to walk to the console and throw the doomsday switch. It is all about appearances.

The Toe Cramper Yeah the name pretty much sums it up. He cramps your toes. It doesn’t sound like much really. How bad can it be? Let me ask you…have you ever tried to make a hasty retreat with a cramped toe? It is freakin annoying. You aren’t getting far.
Notable mentions:
The Baconator (make people keep smelling ham)
The Second Guesser
Mr Left for Right and Right for Left (makes people confuse left and right)
Fecal Man (take a wild guess)

My Daily Commute

Last week I worked two days from home in a row. This was awesome…not only did I not have to make the arduous journey as I was pursued by Ring-Wraiths but I got to spend two whole days not wearing pants. Kick-ass. Friday I returned to work once more, a spring in my step and a smile on my face (though chafing slightly under the already oppressive pants in my leg-al regions. The smile on my face couldn’t have been wiped away faster if I was at a Carrot Top show. My chair was gone. My comfy computer chair that had lovingly been caressing my ass like a warm and gentle hand for 3 years was taken away and was replaced with a monstrosity. Sure the chair might have looked pleasant enough on the outside but beneath that blue fabric lay the soul of an ass numbing demon.

In Hindsight I Should Have Suspected The Chair Was Evil Right Away

Nothing is right. I can’t get it to the proper height. The hydraulics are so sensitive that I pulled the lever to adjust the back angle and the whole thing folded forward rocketing my face off of my keyboard. Two of the levers appear to do nothing and there is a fourth handle, that when pulled, causes the chair to spin 284 degrees counter-clockwise and then shift one foot to the left.
I spent a few hours battling it into submission and thought I had won. This chair is a sneaky bastard though. It lets you think that you’ve won. It lulls you into a false sense of security and makes you think that everything is comfy and you have sunk into body cushioning heaven. Then it strikes again. After about ten minutes of this comfort your spine starts realigning itself into new and interesting patterns. Interesting…but painful. I tried to ignore the increasingly distressful signals that were being sent from my central nervous system but after about the 20 minute mark my right leg was kicking by itself and and I lost all feeling in my face.
The road before me has been set. The battlelines have been drawn. My dear blue worn companion of the last few years had been ripped away from me and I hadn’t even a chance to say good bye to or leave one final smeared cheese dust hand print on it. There will be no prisoners taken in this fight. I will not let this piece of furniture defeat me. My ass shall be victorious.